Mrs. Thatcher recognized the great error of socialism. As she put it, the trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. She proposed a twofold solution. First, stop spending other people’s money. Second, give them the opportunity to earn it. In short, she sought to reintroduce liberal capitalism to the country that had once been at its vanguard — from the repeal of the Corn Laws to the Industrial Revolution.

Yet her one failure — to bring harmony to Britain’s raucous polity — is in fact a testament to her success. Let me explain.

Now approaching $2 trillion annually, the “hidden tax” of federal regulation stands at over half the level of spending the president will propose. We need far fuller accounting for government’s presence in the economy than Obama’s budget: a regulatory budget to supplement the fiscal one.